Native American Peoples and their Dwellings

 Blog post # 16

Spoiler alert:  We made it to our final destination safe and sound on Friday, November 17th!  But you may be interested in seeing what we did on our last few days on the road.

November happens to be Native American Heritage month.  We celebrated by visiting some well known national parks and monuments where we got to see remnants of where and how people lived before Europeans and later Americans came and made their own claims to the land.  

We were staying in Farmington, NM which is in the northwest corner of New Mexico.  From there we visited in order, Mesa Verde NP, Aztec Ruins National Monument, Hovenweep National Monument, Canyon de Chelly, and Montezuma's Castle.  We also traveled to Mexican Hat which is a stunning rock formation in the middle of nowhere and Monument Valley which was an amazing display of rock formations through a long stretch of Arizona.  Four states (New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona) and a lot of driving, mostly without seeing another car on the road or other people at the parks. 

To get perspective, I'll start with a map of our travels:


On the first day from Farmington, we went to Mesa Verde and then the really cool town of Durango.  Both are in Colorado.  Here are some photos from Mesa Verde.


This is the Mesa Verde (green table)  We drove up the long, windy road to the top to see the ruins in the photos below.
Pueblo people lived in the cliffs seen in these photos.  Sometimes the village had hundreds of rooms carved into the side of the cliff that they accessed by climbing with foot and hand-holds.  YIKES!
Later people dug down to make homes in the earth where it was stayed cooler than on top of the ground.    
More cliff dwellings



The next day we stayed in New Mexico to see Aztec Ruins National Monument.  The Aztec people were not in this area.  It was mis-named by the Spanish who came into the area in the 1500's  The people who lived here were also Pueblo but they abandoned the area around the 1300's.  Amazing example of homes and community built before the knowledge of the wheel.  




This line of buildings was (and is) perfectly aligned with the sun during the summer solstice.



Comments

  1. AlanaNovember 25, 2023 at 11:03 AM

    Wow!!!! this is interesting. Thanks for the info Ms. Beth.

    ReplyDelete

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